from 


Servitude to Liberty 



E. N. LIVERMORE 

VANCOUVER, WASHINGTON 



APPROVED AND ADOPTED BY 

THE BETTER GOVERNMENT LEAGUE 


20c PER COPY 


DUNCAN PRINTING CO. 


VANCOUVER, WASH. 







COPYRIGHTED 

1919 

By E. N. LIVERMORE 


©ul.A5 26 974 

MAV 31 191 y 




hn ^constitutional highways 

,Vj5»] from SERVITUDE to LIBERTY 


FOREWORD 

Among the marching millions whose 
idealism on Victory day was in the clouds 
of exultation for the attainment of “Lib¬ 
erty for all forever” there were untold 
thousands whose feet were on the solid 
earth with a consciousness of the report of 
the senatorial committee that over thirty 
thousand corporations, not counting the 
infinity of individuals, had taken advan¬ 
tage of the necessities of the times to 
vampire the life blood not only of the body 
politic but of its entire citizenship in 
detail. 

Not that this was anything new, the 
profiteering of peace had been no less cer¬ 
tain, no less vicious than that of war, the 
difference was only in degree; the soul 
hurt of it was that the plunderbund even 
in the nations death struggle would not 
withhold its hand from grinding the face 
of the people. 

What before was to be feared as only 
a developing sociological danger became a 
crushing concrete condition, driving the 
people into a servitude wherein in peace as 
well as war, the powers of privilege can 
suppress reform with the cry of “slacker,” 
“seditionist,” traitor.” 

Into such conditions have we been 
forced during this great struggle that 
reformational readjustments are as inevit¬ 
able as that day follows the night and to 
the accomplishment of those readjust¬ 
ments there are but two avenues, Law and 
Force, and Force already stands waiting at 
the door. 

Transgressors may block reform by 
seeking refuge behind our country’s con¬ 
stitutional guarantees of protection to 
property rights, misrepresenting them to 
be a sanctuary into which a despoiled pub¬ 
lic may not enter to recover the fruits of 


their greed or to prevent farther profiteer¬ 
ing even though their claims are as wrong 
as their practices. 

Words could not express the enormity of 
the calamity if the admittedly greatest of 
human documents contained inherent de¬ 
fects that permit wrong to be exalted and 
rewarded and left Right and Liberty un¬ 
protected in their struggle for humanity. 

Such is not the case; there is no consti¬ 
tutional barrier to reform; every indus¬ 
trial wrong is a perversion of the princi¬ 
ples of the constitution and flourishes only 
because its perpetrators have so far been 
able to keep its opponents deceived and 
divided. 

To justify our national constitution as 
the foundation and conservator of every 
real right, to absolve it from being a 
refuge for any wrong, and to state the 
legal principles and operative laws by 
which such fundamental readjustments 
as are imperative to the safety of our fu¬ 
ture may be affected,—are the objects of 
the following pages. 

LIMITATIONS OF WEALTH 

Since the patriarch said, “Thou shalt 
not grind the face of the poor,” and the 
apostle, “The love of money is the root of 
all evil,” and the poet took up the theme 
with: 

“Ill fares the land to hastening ills 
a prey, 

Where wealth accumulates and men 
decay.” 

and finally in our own time a publicist 
summed it all up in “Progress and Pove- 
erty,” it has been universally recognized 
by moralists and economists that 
over wealth is the master malefactor of all 
time and place. 

It has debauched its votaries and impov- 


3 


erished and lowered the life standards of 
its victims; the depth of ignorance, the 
height of folly, the physical helplessness 
on one side and the moral helplessness on 
the other, are the measurements of its ex¬ 
ercise in the state; its results are as 
absolute as an arithmetical problem and 
all evils, at least in a degree, hark back to 
it as a source. 

The “irrepressible conflict” that all but 
disrupted our country had its source in 
super wealth of its time and it was only 
through that exalted sentiment, “The 
union, it must and shall be preserved” that 
we were saved as a nation. 

Again through this modern Moloch our 
country is threatened with disruption, 
again we are calling to each other the 
must and the shall of other days, again we 
are called upon to establish the foundation 
of the hope of the best country of all the 
ages upon our glorious constitution. Minds 
that have not understood its far reaching 
greatness and sufficiency are turning tow¬ 
ard the falsehoods of agitators who would 
have us believe that that grandest of hu¬ 
man documents is a bulwark behind which 
wrongs may intrench themselves. 

Such is not the case; wrongs that exist 
are not because of (the weakness of) the 
constitution but in evasion of its 
strength, not because of the evils of basic 
law but because of the evil activities of 
base man. 

Before we are qualified to deal intelli¬ 
gently and fairly with the problem and the 
remedy we must have a clear conception of 
the rights of riches. 

The one, great, superior right of all 
human beings, that wherein under our 
constitution, they are created equal, is TO 
LIVE, not merely to eat and drink and be 
protected from the weather as being just 
above the monkeys but, as being a little 
lower than the angels, to live in the high¬ 
est possible intelligence, and morality, and 
enjoyment of the beautiful in life, but the 


last not in pampered caprice but rationally. 

To attain these ends in life, property, 
wealth, is an absolutely necessary means 
of accomplishment, just so far as the right 
“to live” exists, that far the right to get- 
wealth is sacred. 

Necessaries, comforts, luxuries, beauti¬ 
fications, are in their order THE rights, 
the first one inherent as against all others, 
those following decreasing in their inher¬ 
ent claims in favor of one individual as 
against another,. all of them, especially 
the last two, to be exercised within reason 
and not beyond a point where disordered 
tastes or imaginations go beyond the 
bounds of rationality. 

What wealth is necessary, on the basis 
of a family unit, to provide life in its best 
rational sense and standards ? Let us start 
at first with a basis so ample that the 
question of the amount shall not divert us 
from a full discussion of the main princi¬ 
ple. 

Is a fortune of a million dollars enough 
for one family? Is an annual income of 
Fifty Thousand Dollars sufficient to sup¬ 
port an average family and provide it with 
necessaries, comforts, ‘luxuries, beautifi¬ 
cations ? Let us assume them to be so. 

If these sums are enough to provide a 
family with means for a sane course of 
living, then all above them are acquired 
without inherent right, and are acquired 
at the expense of the opportunities, that is 
the rights, of others, limiting their lives 
without uplifting or real betterment to the 
lives of the getter of such surplus, or to re¬ 
express it the evil of superwealth is to 
cause poverty, want and ignorance on one 
side without giving benefit or good on the 
other. 

It is absolutely undeniable that the 
great economic condition that is restrict¬ 
ing the natural and best development of 
the commonwealth in general and the 
great majority of its people in particular 
is superwealth and the misapplication of 


4 


legal rights of themselves sacred whereby 
a few are able to acquire it. 

In view of the unqualified evil influence 
on all classes of the community if super¬ 
wealth were given its true consideration, 
like any other pure menace to the state it 
would come under the principles of law 
governing police regulations, but it is not 
necessary to be so primitive in legal atti¬ 
tude to it and thus arbitrarily dispose of 
it; precedents in reformatory methods in 
other matters can be followed and consti¬ 
tutional provisions and recognized laws 
already in force can be used. 

The most simple method to get rid of 
an evil, one resorted to time and time 
again, is to tax it out of existence. Thus 
were the old wild cat money issuing state 
banks disposed of, together with many 
economic measures; in that way was the 
outlaw liquor traffic being eliminated till 
the people lost patience. In fact that is 
the accepted way of clearing the commu¬ 
nity of a condition that is a menace to the 
general good. 

The federal income tax and the state in¬ 
heritance tax are a ready made civic and 
legal recognition and declaration that sup¬ 
erwealth is unearned wealth, is unowned 
wealth, and that the government is the 
trustee thereof; all that remains to be 
done to complete the reform of the general 
condition of existing superwealth, is 
to fix the standards of income and 
wealth, which a person is inherently 
entitled to earn and retain, and then 
by the election of right minded leg¬ 
islators to advance the laws step by 
step to the point where right is done 
to all, and wrong to none, and a 
rational and ethical limitation of wealth is 
accomplished. 

Our constitution already authorizes, 
without limitation, the levy of an income 
tax; as a passing comment the law should 
be so amended that at least 25 per cent of 
the moneys collected should be given the 


state wherein they are taken to lessen 
local taxation. 

Inheritances, or the right of a person to 
dispose of his property at his death is 
purely statutory, not inherent. The state 
inheritance tax should be exchanged to a 
uniform general national inheritance tax, 
with at least 25 per cent thereof for the 
state where the property is located. 

With these taxes gradually advanced 
from time to time the surplus wealth, 
which has been filched by law evasion and 
law perversion, will eventually come back 
into the coffers of the government which 
will, as trustee of those despoiled, be 
used for building homes, public utilities 
and roads, or providing old age pensions 
and hospital care. 

These will be the indirect benefits; the 
direct and immediate ones will be that 
when a man has “made his pile/’ he will 
either drop out of active w r ork and give 
some other man a chance to reach the legal 
goal, or when it is realized that the limit of 
fortune or income has been reached, the 
surplus will be divided as wages with 
those who are engaged or interested in the 
enterprise, and the workman will get what 
he really earns. 

These are individual illustrations of 
what will be practically universal in the in¬ 
dustrial world when the state says to all 
having or striving for surplus wealth, “you 
have enough,” “love thy neighbor as thy¬ 
self.” 

Then the greatness of our constitution 
shall be so plain that he wdio runs may 
read, and the realization and apprecia¬ 
tion of our civilization shall be so universal 
that the wayfaring man, though a fool 
may not err therein. 

Then shall be the most glorious years of 
the republic, when the wronged, scorning 
all disorder and exalting law, shall apply 
the constitutional powers of taxation and 
gradually and equitably, yet firmly, so re¬ 
distribute wealth that opportunity shall 


5 


knock at every one’s door, years when the 
children of privilege in returning to the 
community the superwealth they cannot 
directly use, shall become the good Samar¬ 
itans of their times, their unhallowed 
gatherings," the oil and wine in the eco¬ 
nomic wounds that they have inflicted, 
years as near as humanity may attain,—a 
Golden Age. 

SUPPRESSION OF PROFITEERING 

Profiteering is not a major evil of itself; 
with superwealth impossible, profiteering 
would be correspondingly impossible, but 
by its far reaching evil effects it becomes 
a candidate for immediate legal attack; its 
suppression is the removal of one great 
tentacle of the octopus; to stop it is not to 
capture the citadel at the top of the cliff, 
but a breastwork controlling a source of 
supply and support at the base; to arrest 
it will both curtail the activities of evil 
and strengthen the powers of right; dimin¬ 
ish the rations of privilege and add to the 
rations of the plundered. 

Several forms of profiteering are sub¬ 
ject to easy and immediate legal suppres¬ 
sion. 

The government figures showing the 
amounts of perishable foodstuffs in stor¬ 
age explain the high prices of many 
things; the withdrawal of such vast quan¬ 
tities of food from normal use and distri¬ 
bution, breaks the operation of the only 
just and natural law T , that of supply and 
demand and gives the storage sharks such 
a monopoly that they can (and do) so 
force the prices that they include a usur¬ 
ious profit. 

Government built and owned storage 
warehouses with a law requiring all com¬ 
mercial storage to be made therein, at a 
base cost and limiting the time of storage 
so that no monopoly could follow, and pen¬ 
alizing food destruction, would be a power¬ 
ful aid in restoring normal conditions in 
food commerce. 

Another most vicious form of making 


fictitious prices and forcing people to pay 
tribute to human leeches, is that specula¬ 
tion in futures of food stuffs and staples, 
such as is practiced in Wall Street and like 
exchanges in the large cities of the coun¬ 
try. 

A law requiring all contracts for future 
delivery of any food stuffs or staples to be 
in writing, accompanied by an affidavit of 
all the parties thereto that the contract is 
not speculative but is for the actual deliv¬ 
ery of the merchandise named, making the 
parties to such a contract and affidavit 
subject to criminal prosecution if such 
declarations or conditions are false, mak¬ 
ing the money obligations of all verbal and 
speculative contracts of such a nature im¬ 
provable in bankruptcy and uncollectable 
in courts like any other gambling debt, 
would make that line of activity unpopular 
and unprofitable. 

To make the charter of any organization 
which suffered or permitted any such 
speculative practices on its premises void¬ 
able, and the premises themselves forfeit- 
able if they are allowed to continue, 
would add a few helpful preventative sec¬ 
tions for good measure. If these should be 
insufficient to curb such practices and ac¬ 
tivities while the government controls the 
mails and the telegraph, stop the use 
of the mails and the wires to convey spec¬ 
ulative market reports; gambling in any 
form is a crime and a nuisance and under 
bol h views of it, is abatable as a matter of 
police regulation. The sooner the better. 

That form of unfair competition, the 
crowding of private enterprises out of bus¬ 
iness by the big corporations, has done 
more than any one method of business 
wrong to place the public at the mercy of 
profiteers. 

Standard Oil has by this method crush¬ 
ed all business competition, and the broad 
and crooked road it has opened in this 
work has been filled with a host of imita¬ 
tors. Food corporations have put in stores 


6 


and sold below cost to bankrupt fair 
dealers. 

The law governing; such malactivities 
should be nationalized. 

Many of these unfair corporations have 
been ousted from state after state, only to 
reincorporate under another name, raise 
its prices and fix more firmly its yoke of 
bondage upon the community. 

Nationalize the law governing unfair 
merchandising competition and when un¬ 
der the federal law a corporation is con¬ 
victed of such practices let the whole 
concern, with all subsidary branches be 
wound up, and distribute the proceeds to 
whomsoever they belong, not forgetting it 
is the usual thing in such cases under our 
general treatment of malefactors to pro¬ 
vide a reasonable forfeiture to the state as 
a criminal penalty. 

These are some of the open and notor¬ 
ious forms of profiteering from which 
people need first aid, and the remedies to 
be used for their suppression. Many other 
forms can be reached by state laws. 

Investigation is a powerful insecticide 
for such wrongs; once under the limelight 
many of them of their own realization of 
their errors under the force of indignant 
public opinion, cease. 

Profiteering under right laws can be 
made as much of an outlaw' as boot leg¬ 
ging; hasten the day. 

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF UTILITIES 

Long years of experience have showm 
that one may presume that in the main his 
fellow man is honest and that he will be 
honorable to his fellow men and to his 
country in his dealings and activities. 

Such, however, is the debasing influence 
of superwealth heretofore referred to that 
when men possessing it combine it into a 
public service corporation, universal ex¬ 
perience has shown that the presumption 
of probity is reversed and that the public 


may with safety take it for granted that 
the corporation will not deal fairly except 
on compulsion. 

So rank has this almost universal course 
of conduct become that the federal govern¬ 
ment at large and the individual states lo¬ 
cally have been forced to form regulative 
commissions to keep the ever scheming 
companies within any kind of bounds for 
fair treatment of the public. 

In spite of these precautions stock is 
watered shamelessly, exhorbitant salaries 
are paid officials, undue prices are paid for 
materials purchased directly or indirectly 
from interested sources, and by these and 
other means figures are juggled until fic¬ 
titious showings are made whereby the 
public in spite of all precautions are still 
victimized. 

Nor is the matter of overcharge the 
only sin. There is a fraternity in over 
wealth that reduces all other fraternities 
to a retail status. Discrimination against 
small business and private business is 
another dark chapter in the diabolical 
plans to make servitors of us all. 

At every suggestion of curtailment or 
regulation these companies begin mouth¬ 
ing constitutional rights for protection, 
the most precious foundation stones of our 
civilization, the highest and best the face 
of the earth has ever seen, the inviolability 
of contracts and the immunity of property 
from being taken without due process of 
law, are their favorite bases on which they 
take their stand; without these rights,en¬ 
forced, civilization itself is impossible, un¬ 
der their benign protection, in spite of 
their perversion and misapplication human 
relations have assumed a stability never 
before known and human material ad¬ 
vancement, and following that mental ad¬ 
vancement, have risen to a point never 
before dreamed of. Concurrent, how T ever, 
with this advancement superwealth in the 
administration of the public service cor¬ 
porations by claiming protection in their 
contracts, in spite of the crookedness of 


7 


the contract, and farther resting on their 
claims of vested rights, regardless of the 
vice of the investiture, are thereby per¬ 
verting the constitution into a fortress for 
wrong as truly as the pharisees turned the 
temple into a den of thieves. 

As the woman, however, to save her 
child, appealed from Phillip drunk to 
Phillip, sober, so let us appeal from a con¬ 
stitution stultified and perverted to the 
real constitution, that greatest of human 
locuments, broad, strong, true, protective. 

Public utilities have special rights and 
privileges by virtue of charters and fran¬ 
chises ; these are contracts; although 
granted by law which is made by law mak¬ 
ers they cannot be taken away by law 
makers for to do so would violate that pro¬ 
vision of the constitution which prohibits 
any law impairing the obligation of con¬ 
tracts. Again,—among the lights of the 
state is that of eminent domain, which, 
generally explained, is the right to take 
private property for public use. 

Public utilities being organized and op¬ 
erated for the benefit of the public have 
been given these special contract and prop¬ 
erty rights and privileges in consideration 
that they EXERCISE the purposes of 
their organization. . 

While the right to take for actual public 
use is as a cable of steel, that right being 
based on a special privilege is for a special 
purpose and if the purpose fails the right 
fails and then the right to hold is as a 
rope of burned tow, for, to re-express it 
the right to hold property under such cir¬ 
cumstances continues only just so long as 
the public service, for which the corpora¬ 
tion has been organized, and the rights 
have been claimed and property taken, 
continues. 

To return for a moment to the subject 
of contracts; while not subject to legisla¬ 
tive revocation, they are subject to judi¬ 
cial cancellation; consideration is the basis 
of the validity of all contracts; when the 


consideration fails the contract is ended; 
charters and franchises are contracts that 
require a continuous consideration, the 
rendering of a special return for the 
special privilege and rights conferred. 

When the consideration of service fails 
the rights and privileges fail and the con¬ 
tract is subject to court cancellation. 

With these laws of property and con¬ 
tracts in mind the remedy is not difficult 
to find,—the service of providing the 
utility MUST be rendered; whenever a 
public service corporation fails to render 
the service for which it has received spec¬ 
ial grants of power and privilege its con¬ 
tract and property rights cease; this was 
the foundation for the assumption of con¬ 
trol by the government during the war. 
During the last thirty years with such 
failure actual or imminent through insol¬ 
vency or other causes, over seven tenths of 
the railroad service of the United States 
have actually been under government con¬ 
trol and operation, that is in the hands of 
Court receivers, j ust as truly in the hands 
of the government while in the manage¬ 
ment of the Court, as though they were in 
the hands of an executive official, the only 
trouble was that there was no law to 
authorize the government to make the 
control permanent. 

As the law now is railroads are not sub¬ 
ject to be thrown into bankruptcy; this 
should be so changed that they may be 
treated like any other insolvent company. 

A law which will provide that any public 
service corporation which fails for, say, 
one week to render the service to the pub¬ 
lic for which it was organized and for 
which it has received its special favors, 
unless .the failure shall be caused by the 
action of the elements or the act of God, 
shall be placed in the hands of a receiver 
and that the Secretary of Commerce 
should be the receiver appointed and that 
if the corporation should not be able to re¬ 
sume operation in 60 days then the receiv¬ 
ership should be made permanent. This 


8 


law would provide the beginning of legal 
public ownership of utilities, not at once, 
it is true, but in the end surely, one at a 
time and gradually, allowing the govern¬ 
ment to grow naturally into their success¬ 
ful operation. 

The same course in bankruptcy should 
be followed by appointing the same officer 
as trustee in bankruptcy. 

To make this ripen into permanent con¬ 
trol it can be provided that immediately 
in bankruptcy, or when the receivership 
shall become permanent there shall be a 
physical valuation of the property of the 
delinquent company made, and thereafter 
the properties shall be sold as in all such 
cases made and provided and that at such 
sale the government may be a bidder at 
not less than the actual physical valuation, 
and if sold to the government it shall be 
under the control of the Secretary of Com¬ 
merce; another provision should so fix it 
that if bought by another by outbidding 
the government, that the utility should 
thereafter in its operation be under the 
jurisdiction of the Public Service Com¬ 
mission to so regulate its rates that the 
net income shall be a reasonable one on its 
physical valuation only, as long as it is 
operated. 

The present government operation of 
railroads may eventually lead to owner¬ 
ship and if so the foregoing would not be 
necessary as to them; there are so many 
other utilities, however, both interstate 
and intrastate that these provisions 
should be made both state and national. 

The thing that has in the most serious 
way made public ownership most distaste¬ 
ful has been the known inflation of values 
by watering stocks and the knowledge that 
the owners of these fictitious securities 
expect real pay for them and would appeal 
to the courts for full consideration; this 
will most likely be done if the present 
control is merged into ownership. This 
overpayment can be largely reclaimed, 


however, if there were adequate income 
and inheritance taxes in force. 

While the court process of securing gov¬ 
ernment ownership may seem to promise 
a long process, it will be a sure one and as 
before indicated will be a safer procedure 
than to take them all at once, leaving the 
government at the mercy of holdover of¬ 
ficials who would purposely demoralize the 
service to discredit the government. 

The foregoing provides the course of 
procedure for utilities already constructed 
and in operation and would, as shown, re¬ 
quire both national and state laws for full 
accomplishment. 

Different forms of utilities will of 
course require different methods in their 
promotion and advancement. Municipal 
ownership of electric supply has shown 
every advantage over private ownership. 
There is no reason why every community 
of sufficient size to create a market for 
electricity and which is near enough to 
water power to furnish a supply, should 
not have a government provided hydro 
electric plant. 

There is no more stable activity in all 
industry than the manufacture and supply 
of electricity; given a water power at one 
end and a community at the other and the 
cost of production and the amount of pro¬ 
duct that will be consumed at a given 
price can be calculated to a nicety and the 
cost consequentially the profit will be 
known quantities. 

With these elements of the problem 
figured out to a favorable conclusion there 
is no possible reason why the government 
should not furnish electricity to a commu¬ 
nity just as it furnishes water to an irri¬ 
gation project. 

The method could be as follows: When 
it had been shown to the proper depart¬ 
ment that in one proposition there are 
both the power and the people, the cost of 
manufacturing and distributing the pro¬ 
duct could be accurately estimated, having 


9 


thus make a favorable business showing, 
the government could authorize the treas¬ 
urer of the United States to issue, as 
needed and shown by proper vouchers to 
those in charge of construction of the pro¬ 
ject, what may be termed currency-bonds, 
in form and use a currency made by law 
legal tender for all purposes, and which 
are also in effect a government bond bear¬ 
ing one per cent per annum interest. 

This small interest would enhance their 
value so that they would soon be put aside 
and would not unduly inflate the currency 
in use. With this provision for financing 
such utilities and with a farther provision 
that this currency should be redeemable 
with interest in not less than five years 
and not more than twenty years the con¬ 
struction of any feasable hydro-electric 
project to furnish light, heat, and power 
for home, business, and in fact all pur¬ 
poses at cost, which means astonishingly 
low rates, even when providing a sinking 
fund for redemption purposes, is a pro¬ 
gressive, optimistic possibility. 

The exercise of the constructive power 
of the United States in irrigation is legal 
under the “promote the general welfare” 
clause, of the preamble of the constitution; 
there are dollars of good in promoting the 
general welfare of the country in hydro¬ 
electric plants where there are dimes in ir¬ 
rigation, as great as the latter may be, 
and the possibility of this plan for develop¬ 
ment is immediate. 

There is no reason in the world why the 
next congress should not take up this plan 
and provide in a general or individual way 
for its development. 

Every person and every organization 
for civic betterment should tell every 
member of congress that as their repre¬ 
sentative, it is his duty to provide this 
betterment for them, if physically possi¬ 
ble, but for all for whom it is possible, in 
any case, because it is legal, because it is 
feasable, because it means better living 
conditions without any initial cost to any¬ 


one. Every person who lives within the 
range of hydro-electric power should never 
cease to consider that he is being cheated 
every day of his life after this phase of 
development has been brought to its at¬ 
tention, by the lethargy of congress if it 
fails to act. 

IN CONCLUSION 

The national political disease, to our 
sorrow, we know; the cure, too, we know. 
All that remains is to make its application. 

The strength of evil is unitedness; such 
must be ours; the wisdom of evil is casting 
aside small differences, such must be ours. 

We have more wealth than they, more 
votes than they, as wise planners and 
managers as they, and right on our side. 

We are all united on the main principles 
at issue, we must abandon the small things 
and concentrate on the things we make up 
our minds we want and will have. 

It was the motto of Napoleon and Grant 
to crush at one point. 

United on the action to be taken to cure 
the evils of superwealth and its most 
closely allied wrongs, on those evils is 
where to concentrate, and allowing noth¬ 
ing to divert or disrupt us, victory is sure. 

Just as 

“The man who seeks one thing in life and 
but one 

May hope to achieve it before life be 
done 

But he who seeks all things wherever 
he goes 

Will reap from the hopes which around 
him he sows 

A harvest of barren regrets.” 

So is reform. 


10 


The key lies in the law making power; 
concentrate on that and support only men 
whose entire lives are a pledge of layalty 
to right. 

Superwealth cares nothing which party 
is in power, neither do we. 

As long as their men make the laws 
they are trumphant, so we will be. 

Never in the history of our country has 
the policy of superwealth to reduce hu¬ 
manity to servitude been so plain. 

Never has the iron of man’s inhumanity 


to man so mortally pierced our souls. 

Never has there been such an intelligent 
understanding of the whole situation. 

Never has there been such a readiness 
to unite and do. 

Not in bitterness, not in wrath, but in 
the name of The Great Jehovah and the 
constitution of our country let us shake 
off our fears and get together in a definite 
and specific purpose, nor let any power 
under heaven or among men turn us from 
it. 


11 


BETTER GOVERNMENT LEAGUE 


Slavery was abolished but not by the 
political party organized for that purpose; 
the liquor traffic has been outlawed, but 
not by the political party organized for 
that purpose. 

In recognition of the course of events in 
the matter of reform the Better Gov¬ 
ernment League has been organized by 
citizens associated to work and vote to¬ 
gether to accomplish Limitation of 
Wealth, Suppression of Profiteering, and 
Government Ownership of Utilities. 

The League is for the purpose of show¬ 
ing by educational methods that all needed 
reform can be accomplished by law. 

It is an influence to gather together all 
who see that union is the first requirement 
for accomplishment. 

It is a force to accomplish, by non parti¬ 
san methods, the reforms that the ration¬ 
ally dissatisfied of all classes realize are 
necessary to save the body politic from 
disruption. 

The Better Government League is NOT 
a new religion, a new political party, or a 
new labor union. 

The concrete object of this getting to¬ 
gether in the League is to be united in the 
nomination and election and subsequent 


support of only such law making officers, 
from congress down as will favor laws 
that will express its basic principles, and if 
no candidate in existing parties shall come 
forward whom it can support, then a can¬ 
didate of its own will be induced to run for 
that purpose, and lastly the vote of the 
League as a whole will stand as a unit for 
the candidate who is selected as the best 
to represent it. 

The League is against all law perver¬ 
sion, all law violation, all privilege. 

The time is fast coming where condi- 
tios will crystalize to a point where we will 
all be servitors or all free; all to whom 
this pamphlet shall come are urged to join 
a Better Government League, or, if there 
is no such organization near, to communi¬ 
cate with the original league and thereaf¬ 
ter assist in forming one in his own com¬ 
munity,—all to the end that a day of more 
real freedom may dawn upon us. 

The present head of the Better Govern¬ 
ment League is in Vancouver, Washing-* 
ton. 

Communicate with it on any subject - 
connected with its principles, methods, or 
aims and every aid will be given to under¬ 
stand the conditions and necessities of and 
for its organization. 


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